The Facebook Effect Part 1

David Kirkpatrick's the Facebook Effect, is a book I really had been looking forward to reading. I have been a pretty avid facebook user since 2007 when I came to college. For me, it's a great connecting tool, and makes things so much easier in terms of event planning and catching up with old friends. The first chapter in the book talks about an event that I had never even heard of. But basically, it is about a Colombian man who went on facebook and created a group against the FARC, and within days became a world wide common thread. People all over the world were joining this protest group, and soon he organized the biggest protest ever held. When I first started reading the book, I didn't understand what this little story could have to do with facebook, but as I read I was astounded. It is crazy to me how technology can connect so many people now, all fighting for a similar cause. It is almost unbelievable, and it is crazy to think that just 20 years ago a protest like this, would have been nearly impossible. Facebook really has changed the world. It mentions in this book that the author found out about some news event through a facebook status. This happens to me all the time. Facebook is the first place I get big information, and after I see a hint of something in someone's status I then start googling to find out what this is all about. But before facebook, people actually went on news sites more frequently to find out what was going on in the world. 

The actual creation story about facebook was very interesting in itself. I went to see the Social Network when it came out in theaters, and was not surprised to find that some of what they portrayed in the movie was not true. For example, in the movie, Mark Zuckerberg was not in the fraternity as Eduardo Saverin but in real life they were fraternity brothers. Also Dustin Moskovitz was not portrayed as such a big player in the movie as he really was. Regardless, reading this section about the creation was very intriguing. Mark's main goal was to connect people in a way that was different than before. Of course people had instant messenger to communicate, but it was not everyone craved. Facebook allowed for such a great social connection, through relationship statuses, pictures, statuses, events and even one of Mark's first creations a Coursematcher. I thought it was interesting when they talked about how the creators weren't sure how far they wanted it to spread, because at first it was only Ivy League prestigious schools that were given access. I don't think they knew how big this would eventually become, because if they had they probably would have let everyone have access immediately. I think they thought it would stay a relatively small thing that would only be used for exclusive colleges. The thing I find so interesting is that Facebook was not the first social networking site, but yet is the one that taken over our society. Friendster was too slow, and myspace had too many fakes on it, but Facebook seems to have landed it just right.

The Facebook Effect that Kirkpatrick talks about happens when, "The service puts people in touch with each other, often unexpectedly, about a common experience, interest, problem or cause." pg 7 It also talks about how on facebook everyone can be an "Editor, a content creator, a producer and a distributor." pg 9 and that reminds me a lot of the book on Wikipedia. This new technology that we are using gives us such power. I know that I can go on my facebook right now and create whatever message I'd like and either post it as my status, send it in a message to all my friends or even put it in a note for anyone to read. This power is exciting for people, and it can lead to good things. For example, the past two years here at college, I have organized a group of students from Mason Gross to go caroling at Robert Wood Johnson's hospital. Facebook made it so much easier to connect with these students, and plan out when we would meet to rehearse, and how we would get there. This connection we have is really amazing and I think it is something that David Kirkpatrick values. I am excited to keep reading this book because unlike some of the other reads, David seems to be accepting of this technology we have been given. 

MAde to Break 3

Giles Slade is really trying to warn us in this last section of the book that we need to stop wasting as much as we do. I think one of the most interesting and shocking quotes in this book was, "The average American, one analyst has noted, will have watched more than three years of television advertising by the end of his or her life." pg 265 Although this is not the sole reason for obsolescence in America, it definitely plays a role in it. We see commercials for cool new products over and over which entices us to buy these new products before we need them. The new development of neophilia has forced our society into throwing things out before they are ready to be thrown out. Most people have to have things as soon as they come out. Slade gives us suggestions on how we can counteract this wasteful way of living. He suggests we reuse, and recycle. We also need to educate others in the dangers of this world we are now living in, because honestly, people don't usually think about these kinds of things. I know that before reading this book I was a lot less aware about the problems this waste was causing. Although to counter Slade's worry, I think that our society today is slowly getting better. For example, in class last week we talked about doing good on the internet and one site we talked about was craigslist. This past week, my phone broke, and I went to craigslist to see if anyone was selling phones, and to my surprise there were hundreds of postings from just one days advertisements. Maybe it's just the economy, but people are trying to find other ways of getting rid of things besides just throwing them in the trash. Also I know there are a lot of recycling drives in schools now to get rid of hazardous products, like cell phones, and old electronics. Slowly but surely we are starting to get the hint that this waste is dangerous, and if we are going to continue our ways of buying things before they become obsolete, then we need to figure out how to get rid of our old products. Personally, I keep all my old electronics, and have never thrown any out in the trash. When I do eventually decide to get of them I will recycle it.
I really found this book informative, and thought it had basically the same ideas as Technopoly did. Both authors were more "anti technological advances" and were afraid for what's to come. I hope that our society can continue to better itself and become more savvy when it comes to this waste we are producing. Hopefully, through education and awareness we can all make a difference.

Doing Good on the Internet

I think there is a lot of good being done on the internet, despite all the criticism it can get at times. Five sites that I think have really done some good are:
freerice.com
volunteermatch.org
charitywater.org
wish.org
habitat.org
The internet makes it so easy to connect with projects that you may not have gotten connected too in the past. Now with a click of a button you can help someone else out who is in need. I also think freerice is a neat idea, because people are so often bored online, and instead of just stalking facebook, you can be feeding people in other countries. Other was I think the internet has had a positive effect on the world, is through easily accessible information. For example, webmd.com provides all kinds of medical information and how to treat things. Another easily accessible thing now is phone numbers, I know that when a strange number calls me I just type it into google and find out who it is or where it was from. This information was a lot harder to find 15 years ago. It really is amazing how our society has changed just from this overload of information. I definitely do not think it is for the worse though, I think there is just as much useful information on the internet than there is garbage. So many charity organizations function online now and are helping out more people as a result. People are also able to find people easier now, whether it be relationships or long lost friends, the internet helps us stay in touch and connect. Dating websites are becoming huge now, which is something that would have been considered crazy in the 90s. There definitely is a lot of good being done on the internet today.

Made to Break 2

I was a little disappointed in this second half of the reading. I had really enjoyed reading the first part and thought I'd really enjoy the second part as well. I enjoyed reading about American's disposable nature in the first half and it really clicked why obsolescence is so big here. Chapter four talks about the development of the radio, and how television pretty much replaced that. The development of FM radio though is what kept radio alive. Looking at radio now though, I have to say I think it's starting to be come obsolete. With the development of satellite radios, the way we listen to music has changed. Now there are suddenly so many possibilities. I remember when I was a kid, my mom used to have a huge stereo system in our kitchen, and the radio would almost always be on. Now though, I don't even have a radio, or stereo system in my house. We use itunes radio, or pandora. The technology of online radio I think is starting to make FM obsolete. The only time I listen to the radio is in the car, because I do not have satellite radio. I don't think this new technology is necessarily a bad thing. We have developed something that does not completely replace the old technology, FM radio is still around, but we are making improvements. I think this is a good example of obsolescence because it improves our day to day lives.
Another thing Slade talks about in this second section is suburban obsolescence. I'm not sure I really understand this section. I do understand that after the World War soldiers came home without anywhere to go, but I do not feel that homes are something that become obsolete. Homes are reused for sometimes hundreds of years. So this section confused me a little.
Planned Obsolescence is the desire to own something better than the last version that is unnecessary. Most of Americans are guilty of this, and companies take advantage of it. I think this has it's pros and cons to it, and is not entirely negative or positive. It is obviously great for the big companies that make things that are unnecessary and know we will buy. On the other hand though, it also keeps the companies making newer faster things for us consumers to buy, which increases the speed of technology. This I thinks is a huge pro for planned obsolescence. Looking back to the book we read a few weeks ago, Computers, the big computer companies like Apple, wouldn't have continued to make their computers faster and smaller, if no consumers wanted them. Because there is a demand, the companies produce.

Made to Break 1

Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America by Giles Slade is a book that talks about consumerist trends in America. It talks about advertising, and obsolescence, in it's different forms and how we as Americans view items for sale. Obsolescence is an American invention, which started out with the idea of disposable items. Before reading this book, I never realized how many items we use today are disposable. Back years ago, they didn't have disposable items like we have now, so things were valued more. Now we have disposable diapers, razors, cups and pretty much almost anything you can think of. This mentality of throwing things out after it is done with, is perhaps the start of where our obsolescence of expensive and more "non-disposable" items comes from. One quote I really liked from this book, was a quote from a Dutch immigrant. "We had been in the United States only a few days before the realization came home strongly to my father and mother that they had brought their children to a land of waste.."pg 24. Now this of course was from 1870 not 2010 but it really is true. We live in a land of waste. We dispose of so many items on a daily basis, many disposable but others not. You don't even really think about what happens when you throw things out, but it ends up in a huge landfill, which we are running out of places to put. Because of our "disposable" culture, technology keeps coming up with bigger and better things and knows that we will dispose of our old ones and buy the new. They know that all they have to do is make it a little bit better than the last one you had and you will need to have the new one. Our culture makes this obsolescence easy.
Slade does not seem fond of obsolescence in America, and I have to agree it is very wasteful. At the same time though, our culture is to want the newest most hi-tech things. Pop culture shows celebrities on the newest gadget, and so much of the population wants to emulate these celebrities. I do think though, we can divide people into three different groups; the ones who every time something new comes out they are first in line to buy it, the ones who upgrade their items when they see fit, and the people who stick to one gadget for as long as they possibly can, before it breaks. Wealth does have a lot to do with where you fit in, but even people who are not extremely wealthy can be in the first category. Companies keep making products better in speed and appearance that we just have to have it.
I am really excited to keep reading this book, because it is really intriguing to read things about how companies market their items, and really how they control us with their products. Giles talked about GE with the lightbulb and how really they monopolize the entire lighting industry because they can control how long it lasts. It makes me wonder if this is what all these gadget companies do, and why we do start needing new gadgets so quickly. It is a very interesting concept and I can't wait to finish the book.

The World and Wikipedia Part 2

As I continue to read this book I am starting to see that I didn't realize what a community Wikipedia really is. These Wikipedians use this website as a channel for political discussion, and personal arguments. It really is a whole other world, which is amazing considering it's just a website. It reminds me off the video we watched in class, talking about how youtube is a community. I really never thought of these websites as communities, in the way I had looked at Facebook and other social networking sites. People love Wikipedia because they get to write about anything they want. It gives readers of an old encyclopedia the power to be a part of it all and it puts all people on an equal playing field. Whether you are a brilliant professor or some guy in his pajamas in his living room, both get to use Wikipedia and edit articles at their leisure.
It is sometimes hard to trust the information on Wikipedia for a few reasons. One reason is, for a multitude of reasons, the information that you are reading could be false. There are many people who take pleasure in vandalizing articles, and others who just don't have the correct facts. It is also hard to trust some articles because the links they site at the bottom could be mirrors of Wikipedia. We do end up trusting it though because it is such a major site. It's fame is world wide, and it is common knowledge now as to what it is. Wikipedia has also become a place where we double check information, such as breaking news. In this world of technology, Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia know things before the news does. It's crazy, but true. I know personally I have found out about more breaking news through Facebook statuses than the news, and then when I read something in someone's status, I google it and most likely end up on Wikipedia reading the breaking article. We really do live in a world of speed, where we find out about things so close to when they happen. I really found the last little story about the David Rhodes kidnapping interesting. The fact that those people might have gone on the internet to find out more about who he was, is incredible. I feel it's true, if they had seen such a Wikipedia article where it states he had been kidnapping the results might have been different
I really enjoyed reading this book, because again, it puts the world we live in into perspective. One website can really change the world. This access to information is a wonderful yet dangerous thing, and we all need to learn how to use it wisely. You can't take everything you see on there seriously, but if you are wise you will learn how to use Wikipedia to your advantage.

The World and Wikipedia Part 1

After reading Andrew Dalby's, the World and Wikipedia, I had major flashbacks to my youth of using Encarta and Britannica CDs on my old school computer. I distinctly remember doing a research project when I was younger, and in order to find the information I was looking for, I had to insert the second CD into the computer. It was a whole process to find information and it took lots of patience to find what you needed to find. Now, any and all information is right there at your fingertips. While reading this book, I got very curious about some of the articles I was reading from Wikipedia, so I typed in the title of the page on wikipedia.org and instantaneously it was there in front of me, as opposed to years ago, where I'd have to go find the correct volume of the encyclopedia it was in. In the first chapter, I learned how easy it was to alter a wikipedia article and how fast articles pop up after a new event has occurred. Taking their first example of the volcano, it is amazing to think that now within a day, people all around the world with a computer can read an encyclopedia article on something that happened that day. This didn't happen back in the days of print encyclopedias, because it was costly to keep reprinting, and realistically, you can't reprint a series of books everyday and keep selling them. Information started to get outdated, and people wouldn't know which statistics had changed and which were still the same. Today, articles can be changed at any moment, from any computer by anybody, which just shows you how connected we really are to each other through web 2.0.

In Chapter 3 it talks about how the best and worst feature of Wikipedia is the fact that anyone can edit it. By letting anyone edit this resource, you are collaborating with the entire world, using everyones knowledge as opposed to one mans research leading up to an encyclopedia. But, at the same time, this editing can go horrible wrong and people do abuse it, just to mess with the site. The problem is the unreliability then, because if you happen to check an article right after someone has messed with it, you would really have no idea, and the chances that you're going to check back on the article everyday for the next week is unrealistic so you only see the one wrong informational piece. I think it is a slippery slope, and it's hard to trust the site since you really don't know if it's 100% correct. The citations can be helpful, especially in leading you to another webpage, or even to a book where you can read the information for yourself. This leads to Chapter 4 talking about why we use Wikipedia and how students use it. As students of this generation we are used to Wikipedia, and it is comfortable for us to find things on there. It also is one of the first things that pop up when you search something in google. These two factors make it a highly used resource, but teachers are not keen on the idea of using Wikipedia as a resource, because of its unreliability. One of my favorite quotes from this chapter is, "Wikipedia represents all that is great and all that is dangerous about the internet." pg 103. The information is fast, and instantaneous for us now, so we are very tempted to just take what we read there and believe it completely, but as this says, this is a danger.

I think this technology has changed the way we view information, and information keeping. Information about almost anything can be found on Wikipedia, because people from all over the world contribute to it. The vast languages that Wikipedia can be found in is also incredible, and the Wikipedians who dedicate their time to researching and changing the site are changing the way we live. I'm excited to continue reading this book, and learning even more about this ever-changing encyclopedia.